


lonely riders with our hearts on fire

by wordonawing



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Courf and Jehan do yoga, Enjolras is an Idiot, Guilt, Les Amis de l'ABC - Freeform, M/M, Minor Character Death, because they're cute like that, but a cute one, everyone is happy (except they're not)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-23
Updated: 2013-06-28
Packaged: 2017-12-15 21:25:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/854215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordonawing/pseuds/wordonawing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras is meant for this place, has become this place, with hair of burnished gold like the sunlight that creeps up to the porch in the evenings and eyes as blue as the sky that stretches endlessly above their heads as if to say, look, look how far he’ll fly.<br/>(Or, in which one man attempts to become an island, but reckons against the existence of peninsulas.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

_There’s blood on his hands._

_There’s blood on his hands (but they’re not his hands)._

_There’s blood on his hands-that-aren’t-his-hands and it’s dripping down his fingers and he doesn’t know how it got there and there’s a kid on the floor._

_There’s a kid on the floor and they’re not moving and he’s not moving and there’s blood on the kid and blood on his hands but they’re not his hands and there’s a shadow near the kid._

_There’s a shadow near the kid and it’s going to hurt him and he doesn’t know what to do and there’s blood on his hands and there’s blood on the walls and he doesn’t know what to do._

_He doesn’t know what to do because there’s blood on the kid and blood in the kid but not for much longer if he doesn’t fucking move but he doesn’t know how._

_He doesn’t know how and the shadow’s getting longer and reaching down into the kid’s chest and picking back their ribs and ohfuckohfuckohfuck do something it’s going to kill them you fucking idiot movemovemovemovemove -_

He wakes up in a cold sweat on the floor.

His hands ( _but not his hands_ ) scrabble like claws on the slick tiles, and it takes him a while to manoeuvre his shaking body upright and prop it against the bathtub like a broken puppet. He lets the muscles in his neck go slack and huffs out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding.

He wonders if it's normal to dream of killing someone with hands that aren't your own.

He can't remember when they started. He just remembers waking up to his knuckles nearly splitting the skin and a raw grating at the back of his throat. He'd put it down to too much vodka and not enough sleep at the time, but somewhere after the fourth time he woke up screaming he realised that it wasn't anything to do with his alcohol consumption.

He'd hoped that it would subside after he ( _ran away_ ) moved. But here he is, not four hours off the road and trembling like a child, tears slowly whispering down his nose to pool in the hollow of his collarbone.

Pathetic.

He sniffles and wipes his nose on his ( _blood-drenched_ ) sleeve and curls his fingers in his ( _blonde_ ) hair.

The house is quiet and still. The first hint of sun is just beginning to creep over the horizon, the light gently nudging the blue-black sky into its morning grey. He wishes he could paint it, but he hasn't created anything for a long time now. He has only destroyed.

He's beginning to think that's all he's good for.

The sea is murmuring softly through the open window, as if to soothe him, like a mother comforting her child. He slowly falls asleep like that, his forehead pressed to the cool enamel of the bath and his head filled with blood and death and sad, empty eyes.

 


	2. One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s a metallic taste in his mouth and a crick in his neck when he wakes up with his face pressed against the cold bathroom floor.

There’s a metallic taste in his mouth and a crick in his neck when he wakes up with his face pressed against the cold bathroom floor.

He gets up slowly, carefully, scared if he moves too quickly his hands will shift and change in front of him. He scrubs them for a good twenty minutes, so hard it almost hurts, but although the skin is rubbed pink and raw - like sweating meat - he still feels an itch under his fingernails.

He pads down the hallway to the kitchen, the too-bright sunshine hurting his eyes, and fumbles semi-blindly for the handle of the fridge.

Ah.

Apparently he forgot that when you arrive in a sleepy little seaside village in the middle of the night you don’t tend to have much in the way of breakfast items.

His stomach rumbles, as if to protest against this obvious affront to its very nature, so he sits at the formica countertop (the entire place is falling apart; Grantaire wonders which of them will collapse first) and considers his options.

One - stay inside while he slowly starves/dies of dehydration. Not a good plan, all things told. Grantaire wants to at least have some kind of meaningful relationship in his life before he kicks the bucket. That, and he kind of really really wants to bungee jump off a cliff.

Two - venture outside, but only as far as the sea, which is easy enough to get to from the house. He specifically selected this one because it’s not only far (but not too far) from the village proper, so no chance of nosy so-and-sos coming round with cookies to “see how he’s settling in”, but also located at the end of a long rocky path that snakes its way down to the cove like the twisting back of a weasel. Once there, he will construct a fishing rod out of a piece of driftwood and some seaweed, and catch his breakfast, just like the local fisherfolk did about a hundred years earlier.

Option two is not completely foolproof either, it must be said.

Which only leaves option three - turn the opposite way out of his little nest and head towards the village to find a shop.

He really hates it when he’s right.

He sighs, pulls his hood up over his messy hair and sets about finding his trainers.

 

* * *

 

He trips on the pebbly path about five hundred times, a sign he takes to mean that the gods don’t want him going into town. After the fourth time, which leaves his knees scraped and smarting, he almost gives up, but the hunger gnawing away at his spine growls at him and he ploughs onwards.

As he walks, he’s surprised by the distinct otherness of the place. It’s tiny, perched on the side of a cliff like a baby clinging to its mother’s hip. The brochure says that the area’s economy depends mostly on fishing and tourism, something he could probably have worked out by himself from the tanned skin and easy smiles of the people he passes on the way. Most stare curiously at him, but something about his expression must deter them, because no one stops to say hello. He’s grateful for that. The questions will come, he knows, but he wants to delay them as much as he can.

Eventually he reaches what he supposes must be the high street, although there are only four shops on it - worlds away from bustling, hustling Paris. He squints at the sign for a moment or two before pushing open the door slightly hesitantly, a bell chirping to announce his arrival.

The elderly shopkeeper looks up as Grantaire comes in, his face breaking into a smile so wide Grantaire thinks he must mistake him for someone else.

“Ah, you must be our nighttime arrival!” He winks conspiratorially at Grantaire, as if they are sharing some private joke, and beckons him closer. “Come in, my lad, come in! Don’t want to let the cold in, eh?” He chuckles, a warm, earthy sound; it’s well above twenty Celsius, as he most likely knows, judging by the barometer hanging on the wall near the newspaper rack.

Grantaire gives the man a shy smile in return and does as he says, digging the hastily scrawled shopping list out of his back pocket and studying it carefully. _coffee tea milk eggs bread butter water ~~beer~~ juice pasta_ \- does he need anything else? Swimming things, perhaps; he can just make out a display of trunks and goggles within the meandering catacombs of the shop.

“Anything you need, lad, just let me know.” The old man’s eyes twinkle kindly at him, and Grantaire ducks his head and picks up a basket from the stack by the door.

He finds what he needs pretty quickly - discounting the minute or so spent hovering near the alcohol cooler, before shaking his head and turning his back on it decisively - and brings it all to the cash register, pausing to snag the local paper from the pile on a shelf and add it to his purchases. The old man cashes everything up, taking pains to get every single figure right, and bags it up. “Enjoy your stay,” he tells Grantaire sincerely, slipping a toffee into the brown paper bag, and Grantaire bobs his head awkwardly and practically runs out of the shop.

He’s halfway down the street before he realises he’s forgotten the milk.

He deliberates going without, but no milk means no coffee, and he’s practically asleep on his feet as it is. It turns out four uncomfortable hours on a bathroom floor is not enough to keep a human going for more than half an hour without some sort of pick-me-up.

He shifts his weight uncomfortably from foot to foot, hyper-aware of the strange looks being folded up and thrown his way like paper aeroplanes, and turns back.

There’s another customer engaged in easy conversation with the shopkeeper when Grantaire creeps in, trying to draw as little attention to himself as possible. He locates the bottles of milk (glass, like in old films) and hangs back, not wanting to interrupt, but the old man spies him and says, “Ah, here he is! Back so soon, lad?”

Grantaire kicks his feet and holds the milk up by way of explanation. “Forgot,” he tells the floor, which understandably doesn’t reply. But, much to Grantaire’s surprise, the other customer does.

“When did you get here?” There’s curiosity in his light blue eyes, but not the shameless, staring curiosity of the other villagers. He seems genuinely interested in the answer, which flummoxes Grantaire for a bit.

Then the rational part of his brain reminds him to reply to the question, because that’s what normal people do, and he’s trying so hard to be one that it’d be a shame to give up now.

“I, um, yesterday.” He realises his mistake and backtracks hastily. “Well, I mean, not yesterday. This morning. Early. Like, two. I drove. Um.”

“I see.” Grantaire sneaks his eyes upwards to catch a small smile curling up the side of the man’s mouth. It softens his face, so it’s not so harsh - younger, perhaps. He scrubs a hand over his close-cropped hair - it’s golden, like the sunlight trickling lazily in through the open window - and Grantaire suddenly realises he’s actually quite attractive.

And then the smile’s gone, as quickly as it came, and the man’s face sort of shuts down, like someone’s drawn the shutters inside his head, and he takes his stack of newspapers and leaves so quickly Grantaire’s surprised the smell of burning rubber doesn’t linger in the air.

He’s still staring dumbly after him when the old man takes the bottle of milk out of his hands and says, “One euro, please,” and he snaps back to himself and fishes for coins in his pockets.

The man’s gone by the time Grantaire makes his way back down the road to the house. He kicks the door shut behind him and rustles around in the paper bag, pulling out the various tins and packets and bottles and setting them carefully in the fridge. He feels better when he’s wolfed down some bread and coffee, and he settles himself at the pockmarked old table and stares out at the cove.

There are a handful of kids tumbling like puppies in the sand, and a few grandparents snoozing in their deckchairs, but the waves themselves are mostly empty, apart from a small, solitary figure propelling his surfboard with long, powerful strokes of his arms. As Grantaire watches, he positions himself a few metres in front of an approaching wave, and is temporarily lost from sight as he hitches a lift on it, reappearing upright this time, his entire body coiled like the pulled-back string of a bow, expertly and effortlessly riding the crest all the way back to the shore. He jumps down from his board and hooks it under one arm, putting a hand up to his head and then abruptly removing it, as if forgetting that his hair isn’t long enough to run his fingers through. Grantaire watches his shoulders rise and fall with his heavy breathing and grabs for a pen, sketching the barest bones of an idea on the paper-thin skin of his wrist.

He looks at his handiwork for a moment, thinking about bottles and blood and hands that aren’t his hands, before he lays his head down on the table and sobs like a child.

****  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> massive hugs to everyone who read/kudos'd!! uwu  
> hugs also to Bowowza and Rochy my glorious betas

**Author's Note:**

> endless thanks to Bowowza for being the light of my life (and not too shoddy a beta either).  
> as always, feedback is appreciated, whether you love it or have a comprehensive list of reasons as to why this is the worst story you've ever read (i can probably guess most of them).  
> (wow pretentious summary much amirite)


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